Nearly six decades after it first aired, an “I Love Lucy” Christmas special from 1956 was last week's most-watched holiday program, according to ratings released Tuesday.

There was a gimmick involved: The episode of the 1950s Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz sitcom was colorized, as was a companion episode that featured Lucy as a grape-stomper in Italy.

The “I Love Lucy” special on CBS drew 8.7 million viewers to rank as last Friday night's most-watched program and No. 16 for the week overall, according to Nielsen figures. Holiday runner-up “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which debuted in 1965, settled for 6.4 million the previous night on ABC.

CBS was the No. 1 network among total viewers and averaged 8.8 million viewers in prime time.

NBC's “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.2 million viewers. ABC's “World News” was second with 7.9 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 7.1 million viewers.

ESPN was the week's most popular cable network, averaging 2.9 million viewers in prime time. The Family Channel had 2.38 million, the Disney Channel had 2.3 million, USA had 2.2 million and History had 2 million.

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